Best Place for Start-up Talents

Best Place for Start-up Talents

SINGAPORE: The Republic scored another feather in it’s cap when it recently surpassed the famed Sillicon Valley to become the best place in the world for start-ups to hire talent.

Based on a global survey of 10,000 start-up founders spanning across more than a hundred cities, Singapore ranked number one in talent to break what would have otherwise been a monopoly by Sillicon Valley. The Global Startup Ecosystem Report and Ranking 2017 by Startup Genome assessed the start-up ecosystems based on overall performance, funding, market reach, talent and startup experience. The report said Singapore’s jump from 20th position from 2015’s findings to first on this year’s talent index was largely due to good access to experienced software engineers and growth employees, as well as lower cost of hires. Although it dropped two places to 12th in the overall rankings due to Chinese entrants, the report credited Singapore’s policies enhancing its startup ecosystem.

Strong Singaporean Talent

The experience levels of Singaporean talent was found to be comparatively strong, with 80 per cent of engineering and 74 per cent of growth teams boasting at least two years of prior start-up experience compared to the global averages of 72 per cent and 60 per cent respectively.

The report also noted that Singapore has the 6th highest percentage of immigrant founders in the world at 35%. It also has the 3rd highest level of global connectedness of all top 20 ecosystems outperforming even Silicon Valley. Along with a geographical location that renders it an easy access point to up-and-coming tech markets in South-east Asia, Singapore’s 1,600-2,400 tech start-ups enjoy significant government subsidies and the country’s strategies are working to establish local tech start-ups as globally relevant companies, said the report.

Startup founders based in Singapore were the youngest in the world, with a median age of 28. Only 27% of Singapore teams have 2-3 founders, the lowest rate in the world, and 20% lower than the next closest ecosystem. Employee salaries are also comparatively low in Singapore, as the average software engineer salary in Singapore of $35,000 a year is below the global average of $49,000. For Silicon Valley, losing its quasi-monopoly on very experienced back-end engineers to more established technology firms was a key factor for it slipping behind Singapore.

However, Silicon Valley still dominated most of the categories, including performance, funding, market reach and startup experience. Though the Silicon Valley was still number one overall and in most categories, but the report noted that the US is losing dominance to Asia and Europe. Los Angeles and Chicago, for example, had the biggest drop of the top 20 cities, mainly due their lowered scores in “global connectedness”.

However, the US still has seven cities in the top 20 ranking. This is Startup Genome’s third edition of its Global Startup Ecosystem Report. The 2017 survey examines how cities help to grow and sustain start-up ecosystems through eight major factors: performance, funding, market reach, global connectedness, talent, start-up experience, resource attraction, ecosystem demographics and founder demographics